Bloodstain on clothes leads to conviction 25 years after fatal shooting

Mike Glen, Houston Chronicle

By Mike Glenn

Published 11:20 pm, Friday, April 26, 2013

Norma Jean Clark, a 62, is lead away from the 228th State District court by a bailiff Friday, March 11, 2011, in the Harris County Criminal Justice Center in Houston. Clark, 62, is charged with the 1987 shooting death of her husband. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff

A jury found a Tennessee woman guilty of murder Friday, more than 25 years after her husband was shot to death in their Tomball home.

Norma Jean Clark, 64, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the April 1987 slaying of Edmund Hugh Clark at their home in the 22900 block of Laurel­wood Lane.

Clark told Harris County sheriff's deputies she was sleeping in another room but was awakened by the sound of gunfire.

She then ran to a neighbor's home and told them what had happened.

Husband shot twice

Deputies found Edmund Clark face down on the bed with a blanket pulled up to his shoulders. He had two gunshot wounds, one to the back and a second in the back of his head. The murder weapon, a .38-caliber pistol, was found on a dresser next to the bed. It belonged to the victim, Harris County sheriff's detectives said.

There were no signs of forced entry and the house did not appear to be in disarray, according to the criminal complaint.

The case remained unsolved until 2010 when Harris County Sheriff's Office cold case detectives took a fresh look at it.

A neighbor told the detectives that Edmund Clark was planning to file for divorce before his death. She said Norma Clark told her, "I'll be damned if I will be left with nothing like in the last divorce," according to the criminal complaint filed against her.

A week later, Edmund Clark was dead.

Sheriff's officials said improvements in crime scene technology over the years proved crucial in Norma Clark's arrest and later conviction.

Clothes tell the tale

After the case was reopened, crime scene investigators found blood evidence on the clothes Norma Clark had been wearing the night of her husband's death.

The blood spatters were consistent with being near a gunshot. That would not have been the case if Norma Clark had been in another room at the time, as she had claimed, officials said.

Clark moved to Tennessee after her husband's death. She was arrested there by local authorities and later extradited to Texas.